Barely two weeks after English National Opera unveiled its new production, by Deborah Warner, of Britten’s Death in Venice, the Aldeburgh Festival opened with a different staging of the same work at the Maltings, in Snape, the site of the world premiere in 1973.

The reason for what might seem a dotty duplication of repertoire goes back to the time when ENO was run by Nicholas Payne, who planned a long-term collaboration on Britten’s operas with the festival. Only David McVicar’s beautiful minimalist staging of The Rape of Lucretia and a concert performance of Peter Grimes made it to Snape. For Gloriana, Aldeburgh had to go it alone with semi-staged concerts, while for Death in Venice, it has sought a new co-producing partner, the Bregenz Festival, now under the artistic control of another former ENO executive, David Pountney.

Any fears that Aldeburgh would suffer in the unavoidable comparison with ENO’s outstanding achievement were quashed last weekend at the triumphant first performance (of only three, alas). I don’t recall an operatic event at this august address that has made a fraction of the impact of Yoshi Oida’s magically austere realisation of Britten’s operatic swan song, his final tribute to the artistry of his interpreter and life partner, Peter Pears, who created the role of Thomas Mann’s protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, 34 years ago.

Opera at Snape has usually called for compromise, because the Maltings is a concert hall rather than a theatre: there are neither wings nor flies, so productions need to be tailor-made for the space. With his designers, Tom Schenk (set), Richard Hudson (costumes) and Paule Constable (lighting), and his choreographer, Daniela Kurz from Tanztheater Nürnberg, the Japanese theatre director has contrived a vision of Britten’s late masterwork both deep in its understanding of the text and a brilliant stimulus to the audience’s imagination.

Schenk’s Venice is a simple level made out of water and wood, with walkways over a pool that shimmers evocatively against the bare brick of the hall’s back wall. Oida and Schenk make do with even fewer furnishings and props than did Warner and her designer, Tom Pye, at the London Coliseum: a couple of gondoliers’ poles, a chair, some suitcases. The multiple personification of Aschenbach’s nemesis, a figure symbolic of degeneracy and death, changes his costumes in full view of the audience from clothes hooks at the side of the stage. Venice is evoked only by the reflection of the water on stage and by projections onto a tiny square screen above the action, which sometimes blends into the brick backdrop. The production makes the limitations of the hall seem like positive advantages.

Under Oida’s direction, the action is seamless, a considerable feat in this space for a work that, on paper at least, calls for frequent scene changes. Oida demands of his audience that it makes for itself the imaginative leap from the Munich cemetery to the Hotel des Bains, on the Lido, and other Venetian locations. It’s an approach that brings inestimable rewards.

Even Aldeburgh’s casting of the leading roles somehow manages to trump ENO’s starry lineup. The 900-seat Maltings is, of course, an easier space for singers to fill than the 2,300-seat Coliseum, and Britten clearly conceived his last opera on an intimate scale, with Aschenbach’s musing soliloquies addressed directly to the audience. Alan Oke, fresh from his personal success as Gandhi in Philip Glass’s comatose Satyagraha for ENO, surpasses Ian Bostridge’s Aschenbach with his maturity, his more considered acting and the greater variety of nuance and colour that he brings to both Myfanwy Piper’s text and Britten’s notes. Oke’s performance has an inherent dignity and poignancy matched, in my experience, only by Pears and Philip Langridge, to whom he is the worthiest of successors. It’s a professional peak for an experienced singer who has, up till now, enjoyed a slow-burn career that deserves to skyrocket.

Oida’s approach to the quick-change baritone roles – Traveller, Elderly Fop, Old Gondolier, Hotel Manager, Barber, Leader of the Players and Dionysos – is in stark contrast to that of Warner, who differentiated them as much as possible. In Snape, Peter Sidhom’s characterisations, sung with a menacing bass-baritone, are more unified, seven facets of the same character. William Towers’s glowingly sung Apollo, the dancing of Nuremberg’s dance company – including the Tadzio of Pavel Povraznik – and the masterly conducting of the Britten-Pears Orchestra by Paul Daniel all contribute to an unforgettable operatic evening.

During the 60th festival’s inaugural weekend, there was more magic from Alfred Brendel, in the music he does best – Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert – and from Simon Keenlyside, in a programme of lieder encompassing Pfitzner, Schoenberg, Mahler and Schubert, his darksome baritone in thrilling form, luxuriously underlaid by Malcolm Martineau’s eloquent pianism. In chamber and choral music, Aldeburgh’s reputation for bold contemporary programming was upheld by members of the Britten Sinfonia – Lucy Wakeford and Nicholas Daniel shining especially in the solos Britten wrote for their instruments, the Suite for Harp and Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for Oboe – and Exaudi, the extraordinary ensemble of vocal virtuosi. A sub-theme of this year’s festival linked to Death in Venice is Italian music, and Exaudi juxtaposed music by the Venetian master, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo with impossibly difficult music by the moderns, Scelsi, Nono, Casti-glioni and Sciarrino, making them sound both easy and exultant. A dazzling Aldeburgh opener.

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